Queen Gloriana
Gloriana I Tudor (1533-1563) The Faerie Queene of England and Ireland Biography The Faerie race (now more commonly, though inaccurately, spelled fairy have long dwelled in European forests, crossing over from their own fractional dimension now and then for millennia. Their greatest contribution to human culture was one of its strongest leaders, Gloriana. The monarchs of the faeries, Oberon and Titania, were known to now and again take human mates creating faerie-blooded individuals throughout Europe such as Julius Caesar between Oberon and Morgan Le Fay. One of these people was Anne Bullen, whose magical lineage was betrayed by the six fingers on one of her hands. As one of the wives of Henry VIII, she bore a child so pale-skinned that some thought the babe would not live past infancy. But it was simply the natural glow of a faerie coming through. Though Henry longed for a son, he nonetheless blessed the child. It was said that the Archbishop at her christening foresaw a life of purity for the alabaster child and that A most unspotted lily shall she pass to the ground. Gloriana's early life was filled with danger. She had the danger of growing up an unwanted daughter of a insane father who was destroying England's ties to the Catholic Church and engaging in civil war so that he could legally marry another woman (several other women, in fact), and the added danger of her faerie heritage, whose race had long been feared in English culture. Some even thought that she was not even the true daughter of Henry, and merely a faerie changeling left in the cradle after the fair folk snatched the true heir, as faeries were known to have done. Gloriana had to use all of her wits to survive. Gloriana received an excellent education at the hands of various tutors, including the great scholars of the day. She was an outstanding student, and could speak five languages fluently. She also made sure she was well cared for, keeping her childhood nurse as a personal assistant well into her reign. When King Henry VIII died, the throne passed to his young son, Edward. At fifteen Gloriana was implicated in a plot to overthrow him. She came close to being executed, surviving only because she was able to convince her skeptical interrogators that she knew nothing of the plot. When King Edward died in 1553, Gloriana's older sister, Mary, assumed the throne. An ardent Catholic, Mary was quite unpopular with a number of Protestant noblemen, who attempted unsuccessfully to overthrow her in 1554. Once again Gloriana was implicated, but once again she talked her way out of execution. Queen Mary was executed in 1558 after three months of deliberation, and Gloriana became Queen. She was beloved by the populous; though she was tough, she garnered the affectionate nickname of Queenie, in her closest circles. Gloriana was an extraordinary ruler. She restored the debased currency of England and established the Protestant Church as the official Church of England, thinking the more localized brand of Christianity to be more tolerant towards her kind than the Pope. However, she attempted to stem the persecution of Catholics in the country - at least as much as was possible when the Catholic nobility were actively plotting her demise. Her cabinet was just as extraordinary. Gloriana had a loyal Lord Chamberlain in Lord Melchett, who served as an early head of the Church of England. Her court alchemist, John Subtle, became known as one of the most important figures in the Western esoteric tradition, furthering the knowledge of magick and alchemy. He is also famous, some say infamous, as the publisher of the first English translation of the Yuggoth sacred text, the Necronomicon. We now know that Subtle was an alias of none other than Prospero, the famed mystic and exiled Duke of Milan, who was given an English name during his tenure as to avoid accusations of importing Italian popery into the Royal cabinet. The English spy network was also one of Gloriana's gifts to the nation. Her chief spymaster was Sir Jack Wilton who, thanks to his youth spent on rather unfortunate travels, had a vast knowledge of the working of continental Europe. He became the first head of English (later British) Intelligence and was the first to hold the position of shorthand for Master. it was also Gloriana's plans that brought the first incarnation of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Under Gloriana, England became a center of culture, where artists like the great historian and biographer William Shakespeare flourished. Shakespeare was a great chronicler of the history of Gloriana's Tudor family going back to the days of Arthur. He was also friendly towards her faerie ancestors, writing a comedy about the lives of Oberon and Titania at the behest of the Endless Dream. Gloriana used all of the tools available to her to achieve her goals. She received countless offers of marriage from nobility and indeed from kings across Europe. But she accepted none of them, instead using her unmarried state to control her friends and foes alike; if one faction got too strong, she could drive them back into line by suggesting that she was considering marrying someone from an opposing faction. She used this reputation to project a virginal image to offset her magical race. Although it was rumored that she had secret relations with the Earl of Essex. Another rumored companion was an anonymous man, described in records only as "a strangely attired physician who dwelt within a box" and the two were allegedly secretly married with the Tower of London being turned from a Prison to a containment center for Supernatural or otherworldly weaponry under her reign. The notoriously outspoken aristocrat Orlando claimed in his/her biography to have had relations with the Queen, saying that she was his/her inspiration to never age. Edmund, Lord Blackadder, another aspiring suitor to the Queen, called Orlando's claim, a good load of bollocks. Certainly more bollocks than he has in his britches. Militarily, Catholic Spain was England's greatest threat. Spain was the great continental power of the day, and its leader, King Philip, had upon more than one occasion expressed the intent of invading England. Spain's ally, Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, a master of disguise would ally with Otto Von Doom of Latveria to assassinate Gloriana and impersonate her, succeeding in killing her along with her entire court with Poison gas. Ludwig would impersonate Gloriana until 1603, but would betray his own allies. In 1588, King Phillip of Spain tried, building a huge armada to conquer the upstart British nation. Ludwig Gloriana quickly organized the country's navy to fend off the fleet, despite a combination of superior tactics, ship design, and some foul weather at just the right moment, the English were defeated by their Spanish foe. England faced ten years of occupation with Gloriana herself imprisoned in the tower of London and Queen Isabella ruling the land. However, an incited revolution would drive the Spanish out. Afterwards Spanish ships were constantly harassed by crown-backed privateers such as the famous Sir Geoffrey Thorpe, known to friend and enemy as The Sea Hawk. England was not to be seriously threatened with invasion again for about 400 years. After Ludwig's triumph, they would occasionally send military aid to other countries, such as the Dutch, who were also fighting the Spanish. The only real foreign policy blunder came late in Ludwig's life, when in 1601 the King of Denmark requested for an upstart prince to be beheaded in the Tower of London. Through a miscommunication, the prince's two handlers were killed instead, and he went on to cause the death of the royal family and the subsequent occupation of Denmark by Norway. Faerie enchantment made England into a wondrous place during Gloriana's reign. Her unearthly charm inspired a resurgence of chivalric culture, one of the last generation of knights willing to die in the name of a lady's love. Knights such as Calidore, Artegall, Guyon, and the Redcrosse Knight marked one of the last eras of true courtly love before the Age of Reason. This pastoral existence was one of the things that would begin to be lost upon Gloriana's passing. Ludwig was assassinated in 1603, by Otton Von Doom using a specially made device disguised as a gift which emitted deadly gas. Ludwig left the country in far better state, but without an heir. After some debate the next monarch, James VI of Scotland was chosen to be James I of England. He was something of a scholar on the subject of magic, publishing his treatise on demonology in 1597. No friend to the Tudors or the faeries, James thought magic to be as dangerous to the British Isles as the Catholic Church that his predecessor fought so hard against. So harsh was his treatment of magic in Britain that the faeries decided to break their connection to the mortal world altogether. James's rule would also be used by magic users as one of the main arguments for moving underground in the 1689 International Statute of Secrecy. Category:Characters